


Honesty Is Key

by pinkelephant5



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Gen, Locked In, tropes gone wild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-23 22:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6131701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkelephant5/pseuds/pinkelephant5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry is locked in a concrete basement with a critically injured Reece, and escaping via the East River may be the only way to save her. He hadn't intended to reveal his secret to her at all, much less like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honesty Is Key

**Author's Note:**

> Happy ficathon, everybody! Many thanks to Truth for gifting us with her mad organizing skillz (that's right, with a z) yet again to make this ficathon happen.

Rain had come early to New York. Droplets were sliding steadily down melting icicles and soaking into the wool of Henry’s coat at the shoulder where the overhang above the door was failing to shield him from the elements. He merely turned up his collar and turned to his companion as they waited in front of an unassuming blocky building.

“Thank you again, Lieutenant, for making this introduction. Alexander Garrett is infamously reclusive, and his input will be invaluable on this case.”

“So you keep telling me.” Joanna Reece arched one eyebrow in an expression Henry had come to recognize as humoring him.

“How is it that an NYPD detective came to be acquainted with one of the world’s most celebrated particle physicists?”

Reece squinted through the rain toward the empty street as she answered. “It was years ago. I had just made detective when he showed up at my desk, completely convinced that his lab assistant had been murdered by the mafia, and that he was next.”

“I take it his story was not well-received,” Henry offered with a wry smile.

“As entertainment, yes, but not much else.” Reece chuckled to herself. “I was the freshest fish in the precinct, and the guys thought it was hilarious to tell the “Nutty Professor” I was the head of the department’s “crimes against science” task force. I didn’t have an active case at the moment, so I thought, what the hell? I asked a few questions, ran a few background checks.”

“And he’s remembered your kindness for all these years?”

She chuckled. “Alexander Garrett is many things, Doctor, but sentimental is not one of them. He doesn’t owe me a favor because I tried. He owes me a favor because I succeeded.”

Henry’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “The lab assistant actually was killed by the mafia?”

“Russian mafia. I got a commendation for that one.”

Henry was about to ask why the Russian mafia had been so interested in a particle physics lab when the chain rattled against the door and a bolt was finally thrown from inside.

The door swung open to reveal a man in his mid-sixties wearing a cardigan and ratty slippers. Very few recent pictures existed, but Henry knew without a doubt that this was the famous Professor Garrett. His eyes were sharp and intensely intelligent, and his fringe of white hair could have been styled for a Hollywood mad scientist role.

The man looked past them, his glance darting up and down the street.

“Alexander? Thank you for agreeing to meet with us.” Reece tried to draw him back to the niceties, but he continued to scan the street behind them.

“You came alone? No police?”

“Well, none besides me.” She smiled soothingly. “As you requested. This is Dr. Morgan, our medical examiner.”

“Professor, are you quite alright?” Henry spoke for the first time. “You seem overwrought.”

“What?” He seemed to snap out of his distraction and looked at Henry and Reece directly for the first time. “No no, I’m fine. Well, you’d better come in.” With no more invitation than that, he turned and walked back into the gloomy entryway. Henry and Reece exchanged a concerned look and followed him, closing the door behind them.

The room inside gave the impression of a shabby office building abandoned for the weekend. In fact, Henry saw signs that the building used to house a light industrial production facility, and these were the engineering and business offices. The art on the walls, if one could call it art, was bland and fading, as was the paint.

This had obviously once been the reception room, complete with a chest-high receptionist’s desk, although the furniture had now been arranged in some approximation of a personal sitting room, and the desk was now a stocked bar. Down the hall, Henry could see the corner of an unmade bed through the open door of what must have once been an office.

Professor Garrett stopped in the center of the room and abruptly turned to face them. “How can I help you, Lieutenant?” He didn’t offer them a seat, and they didn’t ask.

“Alex, Dr. Morgan and his partner, Detective Martinez, are investigating a murder that may relate directly to your unique expertise.”

“I hope I’m not a suspect,” he answered with no sign of humor. “I spend most of my time alone in my laboratory. Not much of an alibi.”

“I can see why you chose this location, Professor.” Henry glanced around to indicate the building. “The reinforced steel structure and concrete walls are ideal for experiments in your field, and living above the shop, so to speak, allows for very efficient use of your time. Your dedication is admirable.”

Garrett nodded, softening slightly toward this man who seemed to understand. “My experiments need constant monitoring. This is easier.”

“Quite right,” Henry nodded in genuine agreement. “I have often wished the morgue was a bit more accommodating for the living, and for the occasional few hours’ sleep.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Doctor,” Reece added dryly, “and I’m not going to hazard a guess as to which part of the morgue you’ve been napping in.” She turned to the professor. “Alex, we only have a few questions for you, and then we’ll let you get back to your work.” She nodded to Henry to continue. He was the only one who could even formulate the right question, let alone have any chance of understanding the answer.

Henry opened his mouth to begin, but Garrett suddenly interrupted. “Would you like to see it?”

Henry closed his mouth and processed this change of direction. “Pardon?”

“Would you like to see my laboratory? The only one of its kind in the world.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked to a door halfway down the hall. 

Reece called after him. “That’s very kind of you, Professor, but our investigation can’t move forward until—“

“You won’t understand most of it, but you may find it interesting.” He turned the doorknob and pulled the heavy door open to reveal a dark room, and a staircase.

“The laboratory where you predicted the existence of the Garrett wave?” Henry couldn’t stop a hint of enthusiasm from sneaking into his question.

“That’s the one.” He held the door open and didn’t say more, just drummed his fingers in complex rhythms against his thighs and waited.

Henry leaned in to speak privately to Reece. “Perhaps this is his way of being a good host.”

“I suppose he’s more comfortable in his lab.” Reece sighed ever so slightly. “Come on. You can ask your questions and see the famous Garrett Lab at the same time.”

They joined Garrett at the doorway and stepped through onto the landing. There was only a small flight of four steps that brought them down to a lowered concrete floor. The lights were still off, but Henry could see the faint shine of large metallic equipment in the light cast from the open door.

When he had descended the stairs, Henry turned around. Professor Garrett was still standing in the doorway, and even in silhouette he looked agitated. Reece stood with one foot on the landing, one on the next step down.

“Go ahead down,” Garrett insisted. “I’ll be right there.”

“Professor? Are you alright?” She spoke lightly, but Henry could hear the hint of concern and the beginnings of suspicion undergirding her tone.

He wrung his hands. “I only agreed to meet with you because you saved my life.”

“Consider this breaking even.” She smiled calmly, but he didn’t seem to notice or hear her.

“So this is all your fault, really. He arrived first. I only opened the door because I thought he was you. Or he was with you. This isn’t my fault.” His gaze twitched to one side, and he flinched away from whatever he saw next to him, out of sight in the hallway.

“What isn’t your fault?” Henry asked, and Reece reached instinctively for her sidearm. 

But they were both too late.

A second silhouette appeared in the doorway, shoving aside Alexander Garrett. It was a man, approximately five feet ten inches tall with shoulder-length hair. Even in the poor light, Henry could easily make out the gun he was training on Reece.

“Keep your hands where I can see them, Lieutenant. ”

Henry squinted against the back lighting to see their perpetrator’s face. He recognized him immediately from one of Jo’s files. “Tony Sturgis—our victim’s neighbor.”

“I would shake your hand, but…” The man shrugged more casually than he truly felt, judging by the tension in his posture. 

“You found sketches for the dark matter detector on Dr. Mbele’s desk after you killed her.” Henry started putting the pieces together. “You suspected they were beyond priceless, but Professor Garrett is the only person in New York capable of saying for sure.”

“Black market negotiations go so much better when you know what the hell you’re selling.” He hadn’t turned his eyes away from Reece the whole time, and now he nodded his head toward her sidearm. “Set it down slowly and join Mr. Talkative down there.”

Reece slowly unholstered her gun and held it by the butt as she crouched to set it down, her other hand still up. “That’s fine. Just take it easy.”

Sturgis snorted. “Oh I will, once I have an offshore account full of sick amounts of money. Until then, I’m keeping things tense. I’m also taking the good professor on a little consulting trip.”

Reece was beginning to back slowly down the stairs when Garrett burst straight through the doorway, pushing past Sturgis and catching his would-be kidnapper momentarily off-guard.

“No! You can’t make me leave!” he shouted.

Several things happened at once. The professor lunged for Reece’s gun where it lay on the ground, Sturgis swung his arm over to change his target from Reece to Garrett, and Reece surged forward to stand between the two men. Henry threw himself forward as well, but everything happened far too quickly for him to get between them in time.

A gunshot rang out, deafening in the concrete room. It took a moment for any of them, even the shooter, to realize what had happened. 

When Reece staggered back and stumbled down the remaining stairs, at least Henry was close enough to break her fall.

“Lieutenant!” He lowered her awkwardly to the cold ground.

“That’s my cue.” Sturgis was still playing at jaded criminal, but his gun hand was shaking. He knew what shooting a cop would mean for his future. He grabbed Professor Garrett by the arm and pulled him toward the front door. “Come on, Professor. Time to go.” The door slammed shut with a resounding clunk, followed by the sound of a bolt sliding into place. 

Everything was dark.

Henry quickly took stock of Reece’s condition. He’d gotten a brief look at the wound before the door closed, and it wasn’t good. He felt too much blood, and it was pumping out far too quickly. “The bullet passed through your left quadricep. Thankfully it missed the femur, but I believe it clipped your femoral artery.” He worked quickly while he talked, tearing open the pant leg at the bullet hole to gently palpate the wound site, his only means of exam in the dark.

“That’s not good.” Reece understated with a grimace.

“No, but as luck would have it, I’m a doctor.” He wound his scarf around her leg above the wound. “My apologies, Lieutenant, but this is going to hurt.”

“Under the circumstances, Henry, call me Joanna.”

“Very well. My apologies, Joanna.” 

Her wry smile turned to a grimace and a stifled cry when he wrenched the makeshift tourniquet as tight as he dared. He tied it off with a firm tug and returned to face her with his best reassuring expression.

“That should help slow the bleeding, but we need to get you to a hospital.”

“I agree.” She pulled out her phone and sighed when she saw the display. “No surprise, there’s no reception in this concrete bunker. But at least we have a flashlight.”

Henry took the four steps up to the small landing and tried the door handle. “Two-inch reinforced door, most definitely locked.” He flipped the light switch up and down to no effect. “And it seems they had the presence of mind to turn off selected breakers for this room.”

“Probably the ones that power any phones or internet connections in here,” Reece ground out.

Henry narrowed his eyes toward the darkened far corners of the room, waiting for his eyes to adjust, then turned back to his patient. “I should assess our situation. If you feel faint, or need anything…”

“You’ll be the first to know.” She flicked a hand in dismissal, but the movement was tense with pain. “Go.”

He checked the tourniquet one last time before following the wall into the shadows.

His eyes were almost fully acclimated to the low light. Aside from Reece’s phone, what had seemed like pitch blackness at first was filled with enough readout and status lights from the equipment that was still left running to give the room a dim, shadowy glow. He glanced back at Reece. He didn’t think it was only the sallow light that was making her look so pale. His scarf would only slow the inevitable if she didn’t get help, and very soon. He continued his circuit of the room.

“What do you see, Doctor?” Her voice echoed from across the room.

“Nothing that will help us, I’m afraid. There are no other doors, no drop ceiling, and the ventilation shafts are far too small to fit through.” 

He didn’t mention the other object of his search. Joanna Reece was going to bleed out right in front of him unless he found a way to escape. From what he’d seen of the room, the only key that would get them out quickly enough was a weapon. 

He needed to kill himself without Reece noticing.

The first part wouldn’t be difficult; he knew enough about death and killing to make that alarmingly simple in any circumstances. The problem was the second part.

He picked up items here and there and completed his circuit of the room back to where Reece was leaning back against the wall. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t sleeping. She breathed very deliberately in and out. Without opening her eyes she said, “What’s your assessment, Doctor?”

“There is an air shaft on the far wall," he fibbed. "It’s too small for us to fit through, but I believe it vents directly to the roof. I may be able to reposition some of this equipment to send a bright strobe of light up to attract—“

“Henry.” Her eyes were open now, and giving him a familiar look. “You know as well as I do that I don’t have that kind of time.”

“Nonsense. You’re doing brilliantly.” In the back of his mind he noted with interest how easily the professional lies of an M.D. came back, the kindly fictions sometimes required when patients were still alive.

She gasped a small laugh. “Top of the class in pain endurance. I appreciate your sacrifice.” She lifted the loose end of his scarf between her fingers, the fabric almost completely saturated in blood.

He waved a hand in dismissal. “This is why quality fabrics are always worth the price. Try tying a femoral tourniquet with some of that horrid polar fleece.”

“Your scarf is certainly more than it appears to be.” 

For a moment, Henry didn’t know how to respond. Even during normal interactions at the precinct, her sharp gaze hinted to Henry at the volumes she wasn’t saying, but something was closer to the surface now, and it was directed at him. He settled on another reassuring smile and a return to the doctor/patient role that felt safer.

“Let’s see if there’s anything I found that may help me, ah, send up a flare. Or pick the lock.” He spread his gathered items on the floor before him like a child returning home from trick-or-treating. He quickly assessed them further in the light from her phone.

“Henry, I’ve come to appreciate the surprising range of your skills, but you can’t honestly think you’re going to pick an industrial-grade Medeco lock with…is that a mechanical pencil?” She squinted at the small object on the floor in front of him.

“I’m willing to try anything at this point.”

In fact, the pencil was intended to stab himself in the jugular, but only as a last resort. That was a quick but very unpleasant death, and he didn’t think he could stay quiet enough to keep her from noticing.

Reece looked like she was about to say something else, but her head rolled loosely to one side instead, and she would have slumped sideways onto the floor if Henry hadn’t caught her.

“Lieutenant! Joanna!” He squeezed her shoulder as he righted her and practically yelled her name. “Joanna, you must stay awake.”

She moaned weakly, but she opened her eyes. “Sorry, Doctor. Don’t take it personally—I’ve had a long day.”

Henry knew she meant to lighten the mood, but he he couldn’t laugh this off. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. This is all my fault.”

“Really? I don’t remember you shooting me in the leg or locking us in a concrete bunker.”

“You wouldn’t have been here at all if I hadn’t insisted on this meeting with Professor Garrett, even after he refused to let Jo come.”

She leveled him with a pointed look. “Henry, I make my own decisions based on what’s best for my precinct and my people. You’re cute, but you’re not that cute.”

This time he did smile a little. “In that case, I’ll need to rely on brains and luck to get us out.”

“Is it brains…or luck…to stick that desk lamp…where it doesn’t belong?” Her breaths were getting shallower.

It’s suicide, he thought. The lamp’s power cord could help him stick his finger in a light socket, so to speak, if he could find a live socket. Or it could strangle him, at least.

"You’d be surprised what’s possible under the right conditions.”

“Would I?” Her question made Henry look up, and he found her gaze boring into him. “Not much surprises me anymore.” Her eyes slid closed. “Well, Tony Sturgis managed to get the jump on me.”

She would pass out again before long. His tourniquet wouldn’t hold off fatal blood loss much longer, and her leg was in greater danger of permanent damage the longer the blood flow was cut off. It would almost be better for his escape if she did lose consciousness, but then time would truly be running out. He didn’t like her chances of survival if he waited until after she lost consciousness. 

It was time to act. And time to lie, and hope she would be too disoriented later to realize that his escape story was completely impossible.

“Lieutenant—Joanna—“ he amended, and he gathered up the lamp and a few other items before edging toward a corner that was shielded from sight. “I think I may be able to signal a passing car in Morse code using the emergency power on that—“

“Oh, for God’s sake, Henry!” Reece burst out with much more energy than Henry thought she had left. “Stop trying to sneak away and kill yourself.”

For a long moment, neither of them moved. Neither of them said a word. They simply stared at each other, Henry in shocked horror, and Reece with an expression that was pale, frustrated, and completely assured.

“Lieutenant, I don’t know what you…” Henry began to protest out of habit, but Reece simply shook her head, and the denial faded on his lips. She was silent for a moment as well. Her eyes were unfocused, but not from pain or blood loss. Henry knew well the look of someone half-lost in memories.

“Do you remember the Village Gate?”

Henry smiled in spite of himself. “Of course. Legendary jazz club in Greenwich Village.”

“It was 1982, and I was twenty-two years old. Barely old enough to get past the bouncers, and too excited to be there to admit that my date was a pompous know-it-all. The drinks were warm, but the music was cool. My date was older than me. He thought he knew a thing or two about jazz, and I didn’t correct him.” 

Henry tried to picture a young Joanna Reece letting anyone underestimate her and found himself smiling. He almost pitied her foolish companion.

“Around midnight the band broke into a set of old standards, real dance hall classics. That’s when I saw this couple hit the floor. She was in her sixties, and she moved like she’d grown up with this music. He was younger. Much younger.” She broke the spell and looked straight at him. “Not a day over thirty-five, and handsome in a way you don’t see much anymore.

“I watched them for a long time. Not because of him,” she added with a pointed look, then unfocused into the past again. “They were so in love. You could see it in the way they danced together. And the way he looked at her…” She inhaled and let it out slowly. “I realized I would wait all my life if I had to, for a man to look at me like that.”

She looked up and waited for his response. He couldn’t give it right away. He had been listening silently to her story, wrapped up in his half of the memory. Those last few years with Abigail; that rare instance when he had convinced her to go out; the darkened dance floor; the songs from their first war-time years together. It had been a purely happy moment, and one of their last.

He felt now like he’d also been drained of too much blood, and no longer strong enough to lie.

“Her name was Abigail. She was my wife. You were right; I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anyone.” He didn’t mention Abe. One revelation at a time.

He expected a question to follow about his condition, his age, the secret to immortality. Instead, she asked, “What happened?” 

He knew what she meant—who she meant. “She left. A few years after you saw us. Then she died. What I am does not lend itself to ’happily ever afters.' ”

He checked the tourniquet around her thigh to occupy his hands while he asked, “Are you saying you’ve known...about me...since the day we met?”

She shook her head. “Didn’t make the connection at first. Not until Pepper Evans and the '6 a.m.' reel. It was the strangest thing. I guess jazz shook something loose, because I woke up the next morning and simply...remembered.”

Henry wasn’t ready to talk about it, so he turned his attention back to assessing his patient’s worsening condition. The scarf’s material and his knot were holding up, but she was slowly losing the battle with her injury. The puddle spreading out from where she lay looked black in the low light, but Henry knew it was blood red.

“Lieutenant, we need to get you out of here.”

“I agree. Any suggestions?” Telling her story had exhausted her, and she responded with short, breathless sentences.

“I don’t know how much you’ve guessed about my condition…”

“Not much,” she admitted. “You don’t age. You don’t die. And you end up naked…in the East River…much too often.”

He smiled grimly. “Simplified, but not wrong. It’s a long story, but in short, I can get us out of here. I just need to die.”

He expected her to look shocked, scandalized...at least a little surprised. She only sighed. 

“Jo is a very patient woman.”

He blinked. “Pardon me?”

“I can’t imagine what your life has been like. I’d love to hear about it…if I survive. But right now I see…a man struggling alone. Always alone. Even when he doesn’t need to be.”

Henry frowned in confusion. “I’m not sure I understand.”

Even through her shortness of breath, she sighed. “Henry, I’ve been a cop in New York—for thirty years. Did it occur to you—that when I go out—I carry more than one weapon?”

He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. She bent her uninjured leg to lift the hem of her trousers, groaning slightly at the effort, and removed a small 9 mm pistol from an ankle holster. She lifted one eyebrow slowly in question, and he smiled wryly in response.

“Lieutenant Reece, would you be so good as to shoot me?”

“Doctor Morgan, it would be my pleasure.”

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

She really did shoot him. He insisted it wasn’t actually necessary, that he could do the deed himself out of her sight. She almost agreed, but in the end she declined. She would much prefer to see him disappear, she said, and know that she hadn’t just killed a delusional man by giving him a loaded gun. She could never face Jo otherwise.

He made no effort to stay hidden when he waded ashore, and it didn’t take him long to get picked up by a patrol. They thought he was exactly as crazy as he looked, but he dropped enough names to convince them to radio the Eleventh. Once he got through to Jo, it was all over. No off-shore bank accounts would ever be in Tony Sturgis’s future.

The paramedics arrived to find Reece weak but still conscious. Later both she and Henry claimed that Tony Sturgis kidnapped Henry along with Alexander Garrett after he had initially attended to her wound. How he ended up naked in the river was a strange, convoluted, but flawlessly logical story when he told it, and no one involved was very interested in poking holes anyway. Not when they had caught the bad guy, saved their lieutenant, and rescued the biggest scientific breakthrough in decades from being sold to the highest bidder. With the exception of Tony Sturgis, everyone was happy.

Henry waited to visit Reece in the hospital until after the detectives on her case had gone, the doctors and nurses had finished their checks, and her husband was downstairs at her insistence, finding something edible in the cafeteria. 

When she was finally alone, he walked quietly through the doorway. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were resting quietly at her sides. Henry considered coming back another time when she spoke.

“I’m awake, Henry. You might as well come in.”

He closed the door behind him and came to sit beside her. She looked tired but alert, and already less pale. “I hope you don’t mind that I took a look at your chart.”

She shrugged. “You’ve seen half the contents of my veins spilled on the concrete. Why not peek at my private records?”

“Everything seems to be in order, and your prognosis is excellent for a full recovery, in time. How are you feeling?”

“Very lucky.” She paused before continuing. “Thank you, Doctor. You saved my life.”

He tried to wave her thanks aside. “It was nothing.”

“I don’t believe that.” That knowing look was back and stronger than ever. “Whether the outcome sticks or not, you took a bullet for me. I won’t forget that.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I know you would do the same for any one of us.”

“That said,” she continued, “I have an excellent selective memory. I can forget as much as you need me to.”

Henry smiled gratefully. “I appreciate that, but I’ve had the evening to consider it. I think I prefer a world where you remember. You make a…formidable ally.”

Reece nodded. Henry squeezed her hand before turning for the door. His hand was on the handle before she spoke again.

“Doctor?” 

He turned. “Yes?”

“You have another ally, you know, much stronger than I am. I think you know that.” 

Henry didn’t play coy with her; they were beyond that. He merely nodded once in acknowledgement, and she went on. 

“I suspect that your…”partnership”…is complicated, but don’t let that stop you. You deserve to be happy again, and so does she.”

“Thank you, Joanna.” He said her name in half-tones, as if their deepening friendship was a skittish thing and likely to spook. But no—nothing about Joanna Reece spooked easily. Before he left her to rest, he slipped back into the safety of business as usual. “Rest up, Lieutenant. And may I say, it was a pleasure being locked in a room with you.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Likewise.”


End file.
